A well deserved award

You may remember that last year some of the team at TTPL along with four of our trainees attended a Cross Cultural Awareness course that we have had written especially to meet the needs of our partner organisations, and validated by NOCN.

We recieved our certificates just before Christmas and we sent them out accross Europe to be given to the students. Simple enough? Well Daria, one of our Romanian students, no longer lives in Romania! Flavius and the team at the Romanian American University managed to track her down to France and sent her certificate on to her, she in turn managed to get a photograph and sent it on to us. Its great when everything comes together so well.

Congratulations to Daria and all the other candidates - well done!

Daria and her Cultural Awareness Certificate.

A big change for us at the office this week - Suad our Office Administrator will sadly be leaving us on Friday to return to the Netherlands. Suad joined us as a work experience student in January 2012 and then became a much valued member of the TTPL team in July of the same year. Jayne Stroud our Managing Director kindly arranged a celebration lunch for Suad and all the staff at a venue in Babbacombe last Friday.  We will all miss Suad greatly and wish her every success and best wishes for the future. Stay in touch, Suad!

 

The Spanish Graduate Teachers finished their programme at the end of last week and most have now flown back to Spain – thanks to all our wonderful schools in South Devon for hosting our students – we really appreciate it.

Our French students from the Lycee Louis Bleriot also departed the Bay last weekend, hope you had a great time!

Lastly, we say goodbye to the Solter-Linck Group for Germany who will leave us on 23^rd February. We have really enjoyed hosting them and they seem to have had a great experience!

This week we’re at the Pierpoint Restaurant down on the seafront for our student meeting – fingers crossed this dry weather continues!

 

An interesting week in Bucharest... last week I travelled to Romania to be part of a 'Best Performer' networking training event at the Romanian American University. Organised by the University and delivered by Filipe Carrera it was four and a half days of looking at how we communicate - either while we are networking or when communicating with friends and colleagues. Really interesting, and at times challenging

Outside of this excellent training session the Romanian American University had arranged a great programme including an amazing day out to visit Peles Castle http://visit.peles.ro/ This is the Royal Palace and is stunning inside and out...although it was quite chilly up in the mountains and the snow was still lying thick on the ground the views were breathtaking!

We also managed to visit a winery, an interesting tour that gave a great insight into the production of a very pleaseant Romanian sparkling wine - with tasting of course! We also had a traditional Romanian lunch which was lovely - really tasty.

I do hope you like the few photographs that follow...



Of course, no trip into the mountains of Romania would be complete without a trip to see Draculas castle - or at least one of them. This was a great finale to our very memorable day out.

Friday was back to the airport and flying back to the UK...full of ideas to put into practice.

Almost back to normal next week as I will be off updating my Health and Safety knowledge - very important as we constantly strive to keep all of our trainees safe and sound while they are here in our care.

Oh, I nearly forgot...today, 15th February is the 7th day I have been 'smoke free'...not easy but determined to give up smoking this time :0)

See you all soon
Ciao for now!

g.

Well we are approaching the end of another week – so early in the year and yet we seem to be very much in full flow!

A big TTPL welcome to the newly arrived Solter-Linck Groups from Germany, Safarijob trainees from Italy as well as the other students newly arrived from Spain.

Pictured here our Hanke and Angret, our German ladies on the VETPRO Educators programme. Their tailored programme has included specialist educational sessions in colleges schools and nurseries and a tour of Dame Hannah’s, to see the brilliant work that is being carried out there. The ladies completed their trip by each spending a week at our work placements, South Dartmoor College and Coombe Pafford school, many thanks to these Work Placement Providers for making this such a great trip for Hanke and Angret.

 We have two French students from Antoine Lomet group working with us in our office (pictured here) Johanna Marquez and Traicy Regnier. I caught up with them to ask them how they were finding it!  Johanna said, “We have had a great time working in the Training Partnership Office, we really like the people and the work”. We have the girls with us until the beginning of March. 

The student meeting this week is at the cinema – we’re off to see “Impossible” – at the Central Cinema, Torquay.  We say goodbye this week to our Boa Lingua group, Victor from Travel Work and our Fairbund Vetpro Ladies. Don’t forget to pre book your tickets for your coaches or trains anyone who needs to!

A month already!

Wow...can hardly believe it is February already, only eleven months to Christmas ;0) Where does the time go?

To begin with I am getting quite excited about spending a week networking in one of the most amazing cities I have ever visited - Bucharest. We (TTPL) were invited to attend an event at The Romanian American University called 'The Art of Networking' - I was lucky enough to be able to go. Off on Sunday and back next Friday so expect loads of stuff relating to that on my return - if you follow us on Twitter (@TTPLuk) then I am sure there will be some pictures and tweets during the week.


We have had a celebrity in our midst today - Katy Wright who was in The Apprentice in 2012 - has been speaking at one of our Network meetings here at the Torbay Innovation Centre...what an interesting young lady, very entertaining with some very funny stories about her time with Lord Sugar.

As I sit here using about as much 'tech' as I can cope with I have been reminded of a small gift my Father gave me last week...an Amstrad Notepad NC100, from 1990!!! - it is hard to believe that at the time this was (almost) state of the art - and is a nice link from Katies visit as we are back with Lord Sugar, the founder of Amstrad. It was very strange trying to use something that has virtually no memory and is stuck 20 years ago - Mmmm, that could be a description of me too!



Here at TTPL towers we are bracing ourselves for some larger than average groups - so once again if you would like to find out more about what one of our amazing young people could do to help your business please get in touch with us.

Student meeting this week was another busy and exciting event... this week we were at Applebys (Heritage Hotel) on Sheddon Hill, Torquay - a great time was had by all. We had to say goodbye to a German group who collected their certificates and said an enthusiastic "auf wiedersehen" to all the friends they have made during their time with us in Torbay. They were, as is usual, placed at various business around the bay and all had an amazing time. So yet another big Thank You to the businesses involved.
That is all from me for this week...look out for updates during the week from Romania.
have a great week everyone
Ciao for now :0)